Overdone

This last sweaty week has been timed to coincide with the students finishing exams and A level students finishing their exams. Its meant all day drinking with a clubbing finish, sunshine, cider and alcopops. Sweat, beer and dancing all leading to an awful lot of drunken tomfoolery. It's the last time they'll be in so we have to keep an eye on anything not screwed down and somethings that are from wandering past us at the front door. There are old scores to settle. There are old girlfriends, old boyfriends to clear the air with. So amongst the very drunk and the very sweaty we've had domestics and scuffles and just folks causing havoc. All on nights too damn hot to be stuffed into a club with hundreds of sweaty students. Too hot to sleep during the day and too light to sleep well in the mornings.
I'm bloody glad that the heavens have opened and I'm not going to be boil in the bag again this week.

Ticking over

One of the places I have the joy of working has seen a serious decline in numbers. Really over the past 12 months this has been going on. Part credit crunch, part decline in the number of people in the venue's target market, in this case the top end of the socially immobile.
We've not been getting the crazy nights when it's just a continuous conveyor belt of drunks to the door. The student nights packed to the gills still take place but once a term rather than once a week. The result of our diminished door and related bar spend is a serious pressure to reduce fixed costs. This pressure translates into being open fewer nights, this obviously means less nights when I can work there. The pressure to save also means less glass collectors and bar staff, this means when things get busy, the bars can't cope, the floor gets messy, broken glass and spilled drinks accumulate.
The worst consequence of this short sighted thrift however is the reduction in doorstaff levels on any given night. The punters are fewer, they're not miraculously better behaved. We're professional, we don't have jacket fillers, we can all do the job well, each in our own way but we can do it all well. When the door numbers are cut down and we get away with two or three weeks and no bother the change is cemented. Give it a few more weeks and maybe we drop another one. Our workload increases and we push harder but nothing goes wrong. So we go from a light mid-week team to two down on that. The money is saved, a few lads are out a few shifts but the businesses wage bill drops and all is good in the nightclub.
What we don't have is any spare capacity. We don't make widgets, we can't stock some up. We only work person to person and if two lads go at it we need a minimum of 4 staff to break it safely and get them out of separate exits at different times. The observant will note that we also require at least one on the front door and most likely one on the cash desk to stop the revenue walking away with a punter.
This kind of situation is common, we handle it as well as we can. We don't make it look pretty and we take risks but the job gets done and it costs less than doing it right.
What it will take for the business case to change? Until one of us or a punter gets it in their mind to sue for a lot of money they will not see a good business case for spending some money to save more money in the long run. Until they wake up to that we'll just keep ticking over, doing what we do, waiting for the sky to fall in.

Theres is not

to question why, there's is just to wheeze and die.
A very good blogger who's dealt with more of these than I will ever do has written more than a few posts on asthma. Maybe because I know about these and maybe because I've seen things go wrong really very quickly I get stressed with asthmatics.
When doing pat-down searches and handbag checks I get the feeling one in ten to one in twenty go out with an inhaler. Probably the same again don't bother to bring one when they maybe should. We have smoke machines, we have energetic dancing, we have high humidity all of which when taken in moderation shouldn't cause too many people too many breathing problems.
What we also have in most nightclub environments is emotionally stressful boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings and friends. We have legal and illegal drugs. We have alcohol and plenty of it, consumed over ever extended periods of time. This combination is enough to get us looking down at gasping punters, more worried and calling ambulances as three, four, ten puffs later they're still not slowing down and getting closer to passing out.
Other times its the kick out of adrenaline as they're boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings or friends fight with us or each other and they go from partying to wheezing in the time it takes to walk back from the nearest exit.
The speed at which they turn white and drop is scary considering how many they're could be in on even a quiet night. Thankfully they've had the decency not to turn pale and pass out inside for a while, they do that in the fresh air by front door where we can both keep an eye on them and not have to carry them far to the ambulance. The wheezing punter may not appreciate this but its a load easier than lugging a floppy punter out of a cubicle and down two flights from the top floor toilets on a busy night. That we try and save for the passed out drunks.

Calamity

There's one lad I work with who's destined to bring chaos and confusion to a venue. The drunken muppets walking through exit only signs. Bar-staff muppets pressing the panic alarm when they run out of ice. The noisy dark understaffed sweaty, smoke filled pit of a nightclub is bad enough as it is. Getting enough people to the right location at the right time is hard enough.
When you've gotten a walking catastrophe working with you it only gets more difficult. When he's not sailing down a flight of stairs with half an armful of punter helping him to loose the battle with gravity, he's called the fight in the wrong room and wonders why we're all running away from him only to charge back on mass thirty seconds later. This benny-hill like effort does not go unnoticed and by the time we've cleared up the inevitably bigger mess than we should have if we'd have gotten there earlier.
The lad isn't comically stupid, impaired in any significant way or otherwise handicapped. He's just prone to disaster. He'll be the one who's shirt gets ripped, bloodied or vomit covered while everyone else just gets their boots thrown up on. He's the one who catches the punch with his face when it was aimed by a drunken fool at the bloke next to him's nuts. He'll be helping the 25 stone drunken hen night girl outside when she blacks out and pins him against the front desk with her bulk. He means no malice and provides an awful lot of humour for the rest of us as we hear his trousers rip as he bends to pick up a coin or as he slides his way out from under the large lady and gets his radio piece tangled around her bra strap and end up looking like a late snack on a leash.

Night Crawlers

I don't think I live a particularly healthy lifestyle. I train a few times a week and eat a balanced if generous diet when at home. I hardly sleep during the hours of darkness. I eat a great deal of dirty early morning fried fast food. I also breathe in far too much 2nd hand smoke and more than occasionally get direct threats against my life.
In comparison with some of our regular customers though I must look like a vegan Buddhist.
I see the same folks, several times a week getting more than mildly intoxicated. They stumble in from warm up bars here and there, neck a skinful more inside then grab a late night takeaway to stuff into themselves as they shuffle home. They must be more nocturnal than me. They have two alternating skin tones, a washed out off white tinged with grey and sun burnt to lobster. They have the physique reserved for smack heads and those with serious cancers. They seem to exist only to be active in the drinking hours and spend their lives drinking cheap booze and covering their social failures with another night to forget.
This kind of regular keeps the tills turning in bars, clubs and takeaways all over the world.
I get to go home and am glad that even my twisted anti-social life with almost no usable free time I still don't have that bad a lifestyle. I could always be a punter.

Tango

Now some of the supplement taking gentlemen in my line of work do like their sunbeds. Seemingly the buff body beautiful is not complete without a large dose of melanin to enhance the apparent definition of their lean muscle. This usually doesn't pass unscathed the vicious wit of men who have nothing to do but stand around sober watching people get drunk. Some of the lads heed this, others can't deflate their egos enough to get in in to their muscle bound skulls.
Ladies at this time of year seem to think that sunbed orange or patchy bottle bronze is a look to be admired. A nicely tanned lady can indeed be pretty. A dripping orange mess however can be pretty funny. Wearing bright and light colours accentuates the depth of colour and makes the tan show to its best. The white bra's straps peeking through, the bright coloured tight tops and linen trousers getting patches of dull brown marks in an 'Is that tea or shit?' way are very amusing. After a few hours dancing in a sweaty summer club you can see the colour pouring off them. Sometimes it even drips onto the faces of pasty looking chavvy boys. This is how as they stumble past us we know that they've been tangoed.

Off

For the first while in a long time I've taken myself a weekend off. I'm hanging up my long coat and clip on tie for a whole two busy nights off. I'm enjoying the delights of sane if not sober company.
I'll be heading out to enjoy the wonders of only drinking on rare occasions. 4 pints and I'll be merry, 8 and I'll be asleep.
There are problems with this seemingly simple plan. I don't fancy heading to a different town for a few so I have to contend with being recognised. I've been doing the 'go away you drunken twat' long enough in this town to be easily identified. I have to carefully select the venues I go to. No loud music or vertical drinking, no discount drinks and happy hours, no dimly lit hovels and no inexperienced bar-staff, all these kind of limit my choices. Luckily with a few years around town I know a select few pubs where I'll almost be the youngest there. The beer will be full price but well kept and I'll hopefully not have to prick up my ears to any bother.
When I'm out I can't switch off. I still keep my eyes open and tend to keep a line of sight to the door. I'll be checking out each merry punter as they bimble in and order their thirst quenching ales. If voices are raised or the language is inappropriate I'll sit up and listen. I think the years of working have tuned my adrenaline response to a very well used fast response. It can crank up my heart rate and focus my mind in less than seconds. Useful when working, a right git when out relaxing as a smashed glass or loud bang gets me out of my seat and ready to rock.
This said, by pint 7 I'll be very slowly rolling out of my seat and by 8 I'll be fast asleep in it, dreaming of loose women, machismo and takeaway food.

Taking your time

When I ask someone to leave it's not likely that they are the only person in the venue.
It's very likely there are a lot of people in. Some of these others will require my attention shortly, some I'll already have in mind, some won't have done something to catch my concerned eye yet.
I do have a lot of patience. I don't like to use it all at once, on any one customer.
When I've told someone three or more times in differing ways that they are leaving, I've given them time to let their mates know they're on their way out, I've waited while they get their cloakroom ticket out of their pocket, always finding it in at least the fourth place they look, I've waited while they stumble and wrestle their way into their outer garment and I've waited as they make it down to to the front door and stumble off the front step. I'll brief the front door folks and turn tail back to the many others awaiting my consideration.
What I'll not do is spend any-more time talking, arguing, listening to the insults, the excuses, the grovelling, the cheapskate attempts at bribery or the fantastical threats. I'll just leave them there and they can wander in in their own time, I've got better things to take my time. There may be a soda water to be gotten from the bar, or a toilet check or maybe, just maybe another drunk to be shown the door.